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Google asks businesses to stay out of Google+ -- for now

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Google is asking businesses, nonprofit groups, universities and other organizations and groups to stay out of Google+ -- for now.

Some businesses and other entities have created Google+ pages using the current profile pages that are designed for people, and what is meant for an individual user doesn’t meet the needs of a business, said Christian Oestlien, the advertising lead on the team behind Google+.

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‘Right now we’re very much focused on optimizing for the consumer experience, But we have a great team of engineers building a similarly optimized business experience for Google+,’ Oestlien said in a YouTube video posted to his personal Google+ profile page. ‘We’re very excited about it and we hope to roll it out later on this year. It will include things like rich analytics and the ability to connect that identity to other parts of Google that businesses might use on a daily basis, like AdWords,’ Google’s online advertising operation.

But Google is looking for a select number of companies to test out business pages on Google+ before the tech giant rolls out such an offering to all wanting enterprises.

‘We will be doing some testing,’ Oestlien said. ‘We’re going to take a small group of brands, businesses and other entities and create profiles for them and see how users interact with them via circles, through the stream and even how they communicate with them through hangouts.’

The social-media friendly Ford Motor Co. is among the businesses that already have a page set up on Google+ -- though it looks like a personal user profile.

In his post about Google’s plans for businesses on Google+, Oestlien also said that interested businesses can fill out an online form that Google will use to find businesses to match up with early on.

‘The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses,’ he said in his post. ‘We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.’

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Twitter.com/nateog

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